Movie Review: The Europa Report

[Broomstick]

The Europa Report is a 2013 science fiction movie about the first manned mission to Europa. It's done in found footage style which, by the end, makes sense, and has a documentary feel to much of it. There are a number of interesting plot twists and it's hard science fiction. That is, it's largely plausible with minimal science mistakes (I did find a couple).

I found it quite enjoyable. I found it on Netflix but apparently it's also been on iTunes and some other sources. It was released in theaters but being an independent film it did not have access to broad distribution networks, which is a shame because I think it would play very nicely on a big screen.

Go and watch it if you like the genre, I think you'll enjoy it.

[TOSDOC]

I saw it this past Saturday on Netflix. It was pretty enjoyable for a found-footage flick, which I don't usually go in for.
Spoiler

I thought the deaths were largely attributable to a lot of unnecessary risks being taken. I thought the treatments of the spacecraft's habitat scenes and finding life on Europa to be well-handled.

[Broomstick]

Of course some of the Bad Things occurred to unnecessary risk-taking. Otherwise, there wasn't likely to be sufficient drama to make an interesting movie. When things go right it's great for regular life but for a story/movie that's boring.

[jollyreaper]

I wanted to like this movie more than I did. Spoilers.

Spoilers.



Spoilers!



On the plus side, it's trying to be hard SF, no bumpy forehead aliens, no FTL, no antigrav, no wonky science. Even better, there's no urge to turn this into a conventional genre movie in scifi drag. Event Horizon was billed as space horror and that's what they gave you but Sunshine was ostensibly about rebooting the sun and ended up as a space slasher. Or Red Planet, the less said about it the better.

What we're looking at with Europa Report is a doomed expedition. We've had a number of them in history. Some of them feature prepared, seasoned teams who are simply overwhelmed by what could not be prepared for. Others are run by idiots and failure was pretty much the only option right from the start. As a personal preference, I like to see smart people overcome tough problems or be bested by something that is truly awful. While dumb people dying for dumb reasons is realistic, it's hard to make good cinema out of that, especially when the characters are supposed to be smart.

As far as accidents in space, the astronauts on the spacewalk were trying to fix a communications array and somehow got hydrazine sprayed all over them. That's thruster fuel. What's it doing in the avionics bay? Seems a bit odd that they're spacewalking with such low oxygen reserves, have a ship design that leaves suit contamination a distinct possibility and no decontamination protocols.

Given that we are talking space travel, extremely lethal problems lurk around every corner. You shouldn't have to work hard to invent something to go wrong. The only challenge is keeping the problems small enough to kill by one's and two's, not everyone all at once.

The nonlinear narrative trick is also a bit offputting because it needlessly complicates the story they're trying to tell. They had too many characters with too little characterization to keep the story engaging. Really, the important thing in the story is not so much who they are but what they did. I've seen this sort of story told well in prose. I'm thinking of At the Mountains of Madness. You didn't so much care about the humans but the science, the discovery, the alien gods and monsters. That would be harder to pull off in a film. I think it would be more like a documentary. The closest I've seen to that would be the CGI documentaries on the science channels. The Future is Wild is a fascinating, speculative look at what the natural world could be like far in the future. They show us bizarre, unlikely creatures and then the experts show us how they're not as impossible as they seem, explaining the line of extrapolation that took them there. It would suffer if anyone had tried to stick a human narrative into the story, like time-travelling Steve Irwins or what have you.

Overall, I'm glad they made the movie but wish it was a bit stronger.

[Borgholio]

It would suffer if anyone had tried to stick a human narrative into the story, like time-travelling Steve Irwins or what have you.

Actually I DID watch a Steve Irwin show set in the Jurassic period. That was...interesting.

[jollyreaper]

It would suffer if anyone had tried to stick a human narrative into the story, like time-travelling Steve Irwins or what have you.

Actually I DID watch a Steve Irwin show set in the Jurassic period. That was...interesting.

Crickey!

[TOSDOC]

As a personal preference, I like to see smart people overcome tough problems or be bested by something that is truly awful. While dumb people dying for dumb reasons is realistic, it's hard to make good cinema out of that, especially when the characters are supposed to be smart.

My point exactly, couldn't have said it better.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Highlight of the movie: moving square of light from the window on the crew quarters that rotated for gravity.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I watched it on a plane, never having heard of it before.

I agree with the reviews posted. I am glad they made the movie, because if there is one thing we need more of it is original and interesting sci-fi. I think what it comes down to is this movie was just sort of sloppily made: they had a great premise, and actually did a good job with an obviously slim budget. But the movie had a distinctly rushed feel to it, like they didn't have the time to re-shoot or re-edit or do sufficient background research; since it was obviously relatively low-budget, I imagine they had a truncated shooting schedule.

Definitely better than a lot of the other sci-fi shits that have been crapped out in movie theaters lately. I am still offended by the train wreck that was "Pacific Rim" (yeah yeah, I know some people on these forums don't hate that movie, but I thought it was an utterly miserable excuse for a movie with no redeeming qualities whatsoever; I'd rather rewatch "Megapython vs Gatoroid" on SyFy).